


on arkanis it rains every day

by the_garbage_will_do



Series: rewired [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Brendol Hux's A+ Parenting, Childhood Friends, Cultural Differences, F/M, Force-Sensitive Armitage Hux, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Jedi Mind Tricks (Star Wars), Kidnapping, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Child Abuse, Prostitution, Secret Identity, Slavery, Slurs, Underage Drinking, Unresolved Sexual Tension, not involving Rey, underage pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 10:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19196998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_garbage_will_do/pseuds/the_garbage_will_do
Summary: One missile’s path went awry, splintering a Star Destroyer in the void of space. One deserter fled, launching an escape pod and spiraling down to Jakku.One afternoon, Unkar Plutt didn't buy Rey.





	on arkanis it rains every day

**Author's Note:**

> Plays fast and loose with the canon timeline. Borrows from non-film sources like the novelizations but doesn’t comply fully with them.
> 
> [Now has fanart, thanks to the wonderful DarkLondon](https://twitter.com/DarkLondonArt/status/1172260440778379264). Please go check it out!

_Stay here. You_ will not _leave this room until I return._

One missile’s path went awry, splintering a Star Destroyer in the void of space. One deserter fled, launching an escape pod and spiraling down to Jakku.

.

Some days on the sun-drenched sand beyond Niima Outpost, Unkar Plutt traded more than parts and portions. A scrap of a girl tugged at her threadbare tunic, staring down and keeping behind her parents, just out of their reach. Engrossed in their haggling, none of the three adults spared her a glance.

“I rewired it, Plutt, now it’s worth double and— what’s happening here?”

An intruder rode up to them, a male human about twice the girl’s age. The boy held himself like a grown man, with a straight spine and a billowing white cloak that lent the illusion of bulk. He barked out his words, tone strident as he swerved around the break in his adolescent voice.

“You again,” Unkar Plutt grumbled in greeting. “We’ll make our deals back at the stand.”

“Unless I’m interested in _this_ deal.” He dismounted from his purring swoop bike and approached the four of them. “Which I assume is not for parts.”

He crouched down on one knee, briefly revealing the outline of a blaster against his leg, and brought his face to the girl’s eye level.

“This is out of your league,” Plutt warned. “I’ve put down three hundred credits.”

The boy waited until the girl lifted her head and met his gaze, her eyes dark and reflective, threatening rain.

“I’ve got fifty credits on me,” he murmured.

Plutt grunted out a laugh.

“I’ve got fifty credits,” he repeated. “And I’ll have more after you buy that battery I mentioned on my last visit.”

“I’ll only give you a hundred for that piece of trash.”

“It’s worth two.”

“Get back to the concession stand,” Plutt said, “and maybe it will be.”

He stepped forward, throwing both children into shadow.

The boy closed his eyes. Opened them. Turned to the parents, ignoring Plutt entirely and enunciating his words, his syllables oddly elongated, his voice forceful and layered: “I can offer you a hundred and fifty credits. Which is half what he’ll give you, true, but I can also assure you of this: if you leave your child to the tender mercies of Unkar Plutt, you will spend every remaining night of your squandered lives haunted by her memory. You _will_ drown yourselves, you _will_ spend your extra credits draining every bottle of Ardees on all Jakku, and it won’t even _start_ to extinguish the scorching guilt.”

Plutt’s smirk faltered as the sellers did, locked under this boy’s stare. Slow but firm, caught like a transport in a tractor beam, the girl’s father reached out to shake his hand.

“She’ll die on you, boy,” Plutt snapped. “Fall to pieces like an old nightbloomer.”

The boy conjured up a simple, sunny grin, with only a hint of a sneer.

.

On the badlands surrounding Cratertown lay an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, crashed and wedged askew into a windswept plateau. The floors throughout sloped at a 20-degree incline, grit settling onto every sleek gray surface and into the mouths of anyone who lingered too long. Cracked monitors littered the halls, their displays long dead, the air stale with the thin scent of corroding metal.

The boy navigated the dim hallways efficiently, glancing over his shoulder every so often to check the girl. He stopped at the end of a passage to punch a code into a lightless control panel. A set of blast doors shot open, and they entered the old officers’ quarters he had long since adopted as his residence. He marched around easily, like he owned them all.

.

“Are you always silent, or am I just special?”

They were hardly difficult questions. She seemed intelligent enough, so surely she knew her age and home planet or at the very least her name. Yet the girl sat mute and slumped over, rocking herself with minute motions, stonewalling his interrogation.

“I’ll go first, shall I?” he eventually sighed, pacing the dusty floor, reduced to a bored drawl. “You may call me Tag. I was born approximately fourteen years ago by the Galactic Standard Calendar. I live here on Jakku, the planet where I’ll spend the rest of my no doubt thrilling life.”

 _Never settle for slaves_ , a voice whispered unbidden. _The illusion of choice makes them so much more loyal_.

Tag jerked forward to shake it off, and she instantly recoiled, shrinking, flattening herself against the wall, the reflex strikingly quick.

He narrowed his eyes. “Did your parents beat you?”

Her lips quivered.

“Only tell me if you want to.”

She wiped her nose on the hem of her tunic, and he resisted the urge to groan though soap was a luxury in these parts. Then she gave him a tiny nod.

“I’m not them. I’ve decided to help you—” for reasons he would subject to scrutiny at a more private moment— “and that would be much easier if I _had your name_.”

.

Rey.

Tag stayed close the first days. Though he still wore his cloak and weapons, he confined his looting to the other side of his own Destroyer, dextrously scaling the hull’s innards while Rey observed quietly from below. He had rooted through his own old belongings and found her a few possible distractions— a comlink without connection, a laserball that no longer lit up, and a bottle he filled halfway with sand. She ignored the first two in favor of the last. For hours she steadily shook the bottle, tilting it one way, then the other.

“Rey,” he called each evening, weighed down by the day’s haul, “back to base.”

She gathered up her playthings and followed him back through the blast doors.

.

Eyes on the horizon, Tag waited for the storm to hit: wailing, running, smashing in the spaceship walls. He nearly missed it when it came.

Rey sat silent past midnight, curled up on the hard tilted bed he had assigned her. He knocked on her door and slipped his fingers in the gap, physically pushing it aside long after the automated opening system stuttered to a halt. Her eyes were fixed down. Her hands— still busy shaking the bottle back and forth— stilled. Her cheeks were drenched with tears.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty? Too hot or too cold?”

She shook her head each time. Nothing so easy.

“You’re scared?”

No response.

“Of me?”

She glanced up and then paused, gazing at him with curiosity as if for the first time. After a second he realized she had never seen him without his hood, and with a small scoff he remarked, “It grows this way. I wouldn’t waste money on dyes, trust me.”

He lifted an eyebrow as she abruptly reached her hand out for it. Then Tag acquiesced, slowly approaching Rey and sitting down on the bed beside her, grimacing as he bent his head down and prepared to have his hair torn out ...

She simply stroked it, wary at first, running her fingers through copper strands flecked with gold from sun exposure. He closed his eyes, throat suddenly choked up, and let himself lean into her ministrations. Even before Jakku he had forgotten touch.

“They aren’t coming back,” he informed her. “I met them, I’d know. Frankly, you shouldn’t want them to.”

Rey retracted her hand and resumed shaking the bottle, the sand whooshing from side to side and settling with a _thump._

“Do you like that?”

She hummed her agreement. “Sounds like water.”

He considered the gentle rhythm of her hands before fetching something from the day’s pickings. “I found this on a shelf. Maybe there was another— a child at the battle.”

Tag passed her a tarnished metal bell and then slipped back out of the room, leaving her smiling at her new toy. He fell asleep to the jingling, out-of-place and brilliant in the silence.

.

Precise and thorough, Tag had long since peeled the bulk of his Star Destroyer clean. The real work lay elsewhere, amidst half-buried TIE fighters and AT-ATs that dotted the desert, and so he sat at the bottom of his ship’s entrance ramp, rotating the thick dial on his macrobinoculars to scan the horizon for competitors. Rey emerged beside him upon finally waking late in the day, bell still clenched in her small fist. They sat in companionable quiet until he settled on a lonely spot on the horizon— the spine of a Lambda-class shuttle, its wings thin and delicate like paper.

He turned to her. “Shall we go on an adventure?”

.

Rey learned swiftly.

They scavenged in the relative cool of Jakku’s nights, zipping over the sand on his bike, both equipped with goggles for the darkness. Rey trailed Tag, close and faithful as a shadow, memorizing the graceful flicks of wrists and fingers as he dismantled Imperial technology. She peered over his shoulder as he scrolled through manuals, reading entries out to her and explaining how to identify valuables. She disassembled her comlink and put it back together so it worked.

“Would you like to—”

“Yes.”

And so he ruffled her hair and let their paths separate. They dissected ships, starting from opposite ends to meet in the middle. They were connected by comlinks, Tag keeping up a steady stream of guidance, teaching her to whittle the Empire’s pride away to the bones.

.

Tag deflected Rey’s attention from their visitors, men in masks who banged on the blast doors. Every time Tag flashed her a smile and casually picked up a blaster and went out to meet them, leaving her safely out of sight behind the doors. She tensed, always waiting for a shot, and heard nothing but raised voices.

Long as he could he delayed their return to Niima Outpost, but rations run low. With a cloak to hide the blaster on each leg, he set out with Rey strapped in behind him, peering around him to glimpse the bike’s controls. He hadn’t yet mastered the art of tying her hair back, and so it fluttered behind her, wild as the wind against her face.

Tag sold their haul off rapidly, barely negotiating over price, prying the habitual smirk off his face. Business done, he herded Rey away from the concession stand, striding directly to the bike as if drawn there by a homing beacon. When masked men blocked their route he at first tried to steer her around them, hand tightening on her shoulder.

“Tag,” they jeered, hands suddenly hot on his chest. “We have a message.”

“Don’t involve myself in dealings above my station?” he guessed, quirking his head to the side.

They hesitated a moment, struggling to decode his speech patterns, and then one grabbed his neck. “How much for the girl?”

“What does Plutt care? To quote him, she’ll crumble like a dried-out nightbloomer.”

“But she hasn’t yet. And we saw your load, you’ve got her crawling places we can’t reach.”

“If Plutt wants a tiny being to do whatever he wants he might consider a _droid_ ,” Tag spat back.

With a subtle shove of his hand he pushed her away, and she burst out running before the violence struck. She darted out from beneath their grasps, slipping through their hands like so much sand. When one managed to grab her, tangling a hand in her hair, a blaster shot cut through the market, and the fist loosened. She escaped to the bike without once looking back. Clambering on, she fiddled with the controls until they clicked into place and zoomed away.

Yet she circled back, once sure she was free of pursuers. In the distance she saw Tag exiting the outpost, hood up, cloak still intact if stained red. He marched out at a dignified pace, posture sharper and prouder than she’d ever seen.

He glared when she approached, and for an instant she nearly fled again before he demanded, “How did you operate that? I swapped all the controls to prevent theft.”

“It just worked when I needed it to.”

His stare focused, snagged somewhere between awe and calculation, and she felt bigger under his gaze. Then he doubled over and was quietly sick in the sand, just barely pulling his cloak out of the way.

“Are you—”

“Dying? No such luck,” he replied, the sarcasm undercut by sudden hoarseness. “Can you fly us home?”

She nodded solemnly and gripped the bike’s handles tight, growing fiercer under the challenge.

.

When they returned Tag descended from the bike himself and dragged the sack of their rations in without assistance. Yet the second the blast doors sealed he stumbled into a chair, breathing hard. He pushed back his hood to reveal a bloody bruise on his brow, and her eyes widened at the sight.

“Don’t worry,” he smirked, his confidence pulling at her to obey. “I’ve survived worse. But if you wouldn’t mind bringing some water from the vaporator, and the health kit from my room—”

At once she scampered off, her own hands trembling as she brought back the water. She entered his room and found it well-organized, all his belongings folded neatly in the tilted drawers. A health kit with bandages was tucked snugly in the first one she tried, but something possessed her to look further, rifling through for more bandages or anything of use.

Buried at the back of one compartment, one she stood on tiptoe to reach, lay a device like a bracelet. Gleaming metal cleaner than anything else on Jakku. A gem glowing and pulsing at the center, faint blue like a clear patch of an otherwise rainy sky.

“Rey?”

She buried it again and ran back to him.

.

She waited a day, until the worst of the pain faded and he could rise from his bed without swaying.

“Why did you buy me?”

“I should clarify that I don’t own you. You’re not required to work like me, I’ll manage the finances somehow. I’ve a knack for budgets.”

“But why did you buy me?”

“Because otherwise Plutt would have owned you. And he would have worked you almost to death and stolen your earnings and paid you nothing, and that would further ruin the market for the rest of us.”

It was the simplest explanation. Rehearsed so many times, it sounded like truth.

.

Tag went scavenging for two pipes, lightweight material that barely clanged when thrown together. He handed the slighter one to Rey and kept the other for himself and told her to attack.

Rey scowled at the height difference between them. It increased every day as Tag’s frame stretched taller and drew skin tight over lengthening limbs, his angles growing more severe, his eyes always hungry. Yet he showed no pity and simply raised his weapon.

So she lunged. Jabbing, smacking, her blows fell in flurries, yet Tag spun on his toes and blocked them all with military precision. He played defense, shields up, focused wholly on parrying her attacks, slow and steady as she whirled like a flame, like a X-wing around him. Rey pulled back to catch her breath and observe him, circling slowly, matching the arch of his eyebrow by lifting her own. Then she dove back in, honing in on the old chink in his armor, and a voice came to chide _your flanks boy, why do you leave them open as if you’re begging to be sliced up and roasted_ as she slammed her pipe against his ribs.

At once she backed away apologizing as he gingerly pressed the spot, verifying with a wince that they were only bruised. Then he snapped up, forcing his chin high, and congratulated her on a battle well won.

“Now do it again.”

“But you’re hurt—“

He twirled his pipe and grazed her cheek, and with a shriek of laughter she fell back into battle.

.

He taught her to flick off a gun’s safety and aim and shoot, and so she retraced the footsteps of long-dead Imperial soldiers and picked her targets, blasts echoing across their Star Destroyer, leaving acrid stains where they hit. Soon she left the ship armed, a blaster bouncing on a hip, a staff nearly her own height strapped to her back. Tag kept two blasters of his own, along with a knife and what Rey rather suspected was a grenade, and Unkar Plutt’s thugs learned to leave them well enough alone.

Still she caught him just outside their ship, scanning for people with his binoculars. Near sunset, the sand shone along the horizon, a hazy mirage that glimmered with the promise of ocean.

“Why’d you end up here? On Jakku,” she added before he could misinterpret her.

“Change of scene” came the flippant response.

“From what?”

He froze, caught off guard. Lowered the binoculars. “Rain.”

“Rain,” she repeated, brow wrinkling with confusion.

“Almost every hour of the day. The sky was permanently grey. There were two suns, but you might not know it if not for the textbooks.”

“What was the rain like?”

“It rusted metal, short-circuited droids, washed out whole cities in an afternoon. You couldn’t sleep without soundproofing whenever the thunder got going, and if you stayed out the night without checking a forecast, you risked being carried off by a flash flood before dawn and drowned.”

He recalled all this wistfully.

“Who are you waiting for from back there?”

Tag turned to her with a strange expression. “I’m not waiting for anyone.”

She let it go.

.

It took Tag longer than he’d admit to perfect Rey’s hairstyle, the same three buns he saw her with for the first time. As he struggled to distribute the hair, tying up one bun while budgeting enough hair for the next, she wriggled impatiently and eventually ran off. Still he insisted on retrying it every few weeks. The first time he managed it properly the old feel of it clogged her throat, the buns comfortable and familiar as they bobbed behind her.

.

Growing stronger and armed to the teeth, Rey began to roam Niima Outpost alone on their visits. She made contacts easily, with a sunny smile to counteract her visible weaponry. Other youngsters took to her immediately, passing her what she could present to Tag as valuable intelligence and what she knew was actually hot gossip.

“Did you know Plutt’s got a new ship coming in? Mandalorian, they say.”

“You know that new woman Plutt’s carrying on with? I hear she’s actually a droid made by scammers.”

“Remember that new village we passed? Turns out they’re a church. They worship the Jedi religion, with something called the Force.”

“And what do you know of the Force?” Tag asked, his usual drawl tinged with more than the usual note of sarcasm.

“It's a power the Jedi have that lets them control people and ... make things float.”

“Impressive,” he said after a pause, giving her a nod as they strode out of the outpost to the bike. “That’s largely correct, though making things float is only the half of it.”

“Do you think I have it?” she demanded, eyes bright with excitement.

Tag glanced around to check they were out of the outpost’s earshot. “I’d bet on it. I can’t manage a proper blood test here, but anyone who flies and fights like you without training must have some of the Force.”

“Have _you_ got it?”

“No.”

“But how do you know?”

“Because my blood was tested,” he replied shortly, “and found wanting.”

“Should I go to the church, do you think? To learn more?”

“Only if you’re anxious for a quick death.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if you know about this church, then soon the whole galaxy will, and anyone with a grudge against Jedi will come to Jakku and burn the whole bloody village down.”

She gasped. “Do the villagers know?”

Swinging one leg over the bike, he gave her a grim smirk. “Undoubtedly.”

.

She poured out her old bottle of sand and sat at their common table for hours, staring at the grains, willing them to float. Though Tag watched this with an amused look he didn’t have the decency to hide, he comforted her at the end by sparring with her three times. Each time he held nothing back, and each time he wound up begging for her mercy.

.

As she ingratiated herself with other scavengers, Rey came to realize that Tag held a dual position in Jakku lore, as a source of both fear and comic relief. She nearly scolded another girl for parodying Tag’s Coruscanti accent, all enunciation and overlong vowels and precious, tortured sentence structures. Yet a realization stopped her, namely that the parody was spot-on.

“Did you know they make fun of your accent for being fake?”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“I know,” she said with a grin.

“For you,” he smirked, not missing a beat. “After all, you’re the one who’s copied my accent and only got it half-right.”

“Oi!”

He emitted a delicate snort.

“Hasn’t anyone,” Rey persisted, “ever told you your accent’s too complicated?”

“You’re the only other person I regularly talk to, so . . no.”

“The only _other_ person?”

“I also speak to myself. Lots of rousing speeches. Never had a single complaint,” he deadpanned, “on an excess of syntactic complexity.”

Some days the talk turned bitter, and she reported that the others suspected him, that they thought he believed himself better than them.

He spun around on his heel to inspect the dusty half-dead town. “Good.”

.

One morning Tag stepped out of his quarters and found Rey surrounded by a bottle’s worth of sand, grains glistening in midair. She breathed evenly, lost in peaceful contemplation. The sight stopped his own breath.

He commemorated that day with an extra mark, neat and curling. For years he had tracked the days with chalk on a wall, lines precise, tally marks grouped neatly by sets of ten, then a hundred, with special designs for special days like that one. He grew with the marks, trading his white cloak for grey robes with fasteners down the front, slowly covering his bony cheeks with a more distinguished-looking beard.

Rey grew accustomed to Tag’s whims and airs, but she never quite came around to the impulse purchases. He defended these rigorously— “don’t forget it’s how I got you”— but still she’d gawk as he browsed Niima Outpost and haggled relentlessly across languages over the strangest wares. He purchased a flowerpot, though next to nothing on Jakku could rightly fill it. He bought galven coils for the turbolasers he had been trying to fix for three years without the slightest success. He got a scratched-up flight simulator, an old training tool for Imperial pilots up in space, though Rey protested this less when he fixed it and gave it to her, a present on an anniversary of their meeting. They spent hours trading it back and forth, Tag taking great pleasure in designing devious missions for them both.

Rey should have learned that Tag would add just about any piece of junk to his hoard if it caught his fancy. She should have learned, but the tiny twisted metal pieces at the Outpost were so funny that she _had_ to call him over to laugh.

“Tag, it’s like a shovel for five grains of sand at a time. And if one blade on a knife won’t do, you can have four on a skewer, all tiny and dull!”

He took in her description with a bemused smirk and allowed her to pull him to the stall by his elbow. Yet when he saw the curiosities his eyes widened and his lips slackened and he snapped to get the seller’s attention.

“How much for them all?”

“Twenty.”

“I’ll give you five.”

“Fifteen.”

“Deal.”

“What are they even?” Rey demanded, examining the odd shapes with a wrinkled nose.

“Cutlery.”

“Huh?”

“It’s for eating.”

She squinted at them, holding one of the shovels up in the sunlight. “They don’t look edible. And this knife, you couldn’t do real damage with it.”

“First of all that’s a butter knife, it’s not meant for ‘damage.’ Second of all, never underestimate a quick blow to an eye socket.”

She rolled her eyes, the same way she did that night when he handed her two utensils after cleaning them lovingly. At his command she gripped them in fists and tried sawing at her food, only to get nothing. Yet Tag used his own fork to smoothly cut up his polystarch bread, easily skewering pieces and soaking them in their protein stew. He had finished off the rest of his soup with dainty dips of a spoon by the time she managed a single bite.

“What’s the point of these?” she grumbled while chewing.

“Mouth closed,” he reminded her with a long-suffering sigh. “The first purpose is to avoid contamination. The secondary purpose, which is apparently necessary here, is to keep you from shoving your entire meal in your mouth at once.”

Rey glowered at him. “Where’d you learn this idiocy?”

“Polite society.”

“Why do _I_ have to learn it?”

“Because _you_ still have a chance of making it off this dump. You’ll thank me one day.” He sniffed before musing, “A really _proper_ meal will have napkins, a tablecloth, and at least four of each utensil per person.”

“That’s wasteful!”

“That’s etiquette.”

.

Rey grew into longer tunics and taller staffs. She grew into a speeder of her own, one she and Tag cobbled together from five different machines. She grew into blindfolds, a strip of cloth tied around her eyes as they dueled. He had gotten faster from fighting her, stronger and more strategic, but in a fair fight she still defeated him three times out of four.

The blindfold tipped things back in his favor, and at first she called it revenge, a chance for him to doom her before they even got started. Yet he laughed and told her to just “use the Force, Rey.” Perhaps it was the Force, perhaps she only heard his footsteps and knew him too well, but she found herself able to block his incoming strikes four, five times before he smacked her.

Gradually she grew confident in her defense, and so she branched out into attacks of her own. With the advantage of sight he easily sidestepped her at first, but her awareness of him settled into her soul. And so she turned bolder, brandishing her pipe— he had shortened both their weapons to sword-length, declaring that she was already competent enough with a staff— and matching him blow for blow. She pressed him back, cornering him on the sand against the outer wall of their Destroyer, forcing him to his knees and smacking his weapon from his grip, jabbing her own beneath his chin, a hair away from his tender throat.

Breathless he stared up at her, sun-kissed and beaming and flushed with victory. He felt the oddest sensation of drowning, sinking like quicksand of the Goazon Badlands.

.

Tag reserved his charm for Rey and for outsiders who needed manipulating. By contrast Rey smiled at the world just as a matter of course, and so Tag’s eyebrows shot up in shock when she declared, “I can’t stand them.”

“They” were a crew of hotshot off-worlders who had crashed in the desert and somehow landed in Unkar Plutt’s service— not as slaves technically, but as indentured servants paying off a tremendous debt, marked by shock collars around their neck. According to rumor they had a knack for clever wiring. In Rey’s experience they had a knack for earning her staff in their ribs.

“I saw you putting them in their place,” Tag said. His voice hardened as he asked, “Did they harass you?”

“Barely. You’re the one they’re interested in.”

He froze, face contorting. “They expressed an interest in _my_ ... virtue?”

“They did, and offered quite a price too,” she said with a laugh at his comical expression. “More to the point, they don’t like your dealings with Plutt. He is rather awful, you know.”

“I work within the existing power structure,” he harrumphed, the same answer he had given her twenty times before. “It’s the key to survival.”

Their visits to the outpost upturned their usual nocturnal schedule, and so they rested that night instead of scavenging. Yet something tugged at Rey, yanking her from sleep.

“Tag,” she called. A sniff, and she kicked off her covers and shot to her feet. “Tag, is that smoke?”

A clunk came from the next room, and then Tag’s footsteps slammed across their living space. She peeked outside and found him approaching the blast door and placing a hand across it. He hissed at the touch.

“They overloaded the main circuits,” she informed him, suddenly certain. “The rest of the ship’s in flames already.”

He snapped into action. “Follow the plan. Get weapons—”

“Then water, then money, I know,” she said, fumbling for her night goggles.

“Got it?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good.” Grabbing his macrobinoculars he shoved open the “back door,” a secret escape hatch they had built into the wall of their quarters, and swung himself out into the night.

Holding out his pair of goggles, Rey stared at the empty spot, only to begin coughing at the smoke that immediately drifted in. She leapt into action, sorting their belongings into categories he had defined and drilled into her years back, using the Force to hurl their valuables out into the sand, as far from the blaze as she could manage. She bundled up the contents of their main weapons cabinet— blasters, knives, her staff, and an odd cylinder striped silver and black— before moving to detach their vaporator from the wall. Now gagging on the acrid stench, she adjusted her goggles to cope with the haze and went right on with her work, efficiently tearing down every pretense of home they had ever constructed.

The flames crept into their quarters just as she got the necessities out, and she dashed to the hatch, about to jump down herself. Yet she darted back in one more time, to steal a bracelet off a top shelf.

With a leap she tumbled soft into the sand and then resumed her work, not daring to look at the blazing wreck behind her. She willfully ignored how the whole night had taken on a brazen red glow as she cast their belongings further, further, begging that the Force work when she needed it to. It rose to her demands. Still her whole body trembled, quivering like the embers wisping off the ship. As soon as she’d gotten out of the smoke she raised her staff, searching for the culprits, ready to break a few limbs, maybe a rib or two to show them justice—

A shot pierced the sky. Too late, Rey slammed her hands over ears ringing from the sound, louder than the fire’s crackling roar, than all the blaster shots she’d heard in her life combined. A second later she realized the source.

Tag had fixed the turbolaser.

Rey kept going, now moving their respective speeders away from the flames, waiting breathlessly for Tag to join her in the work. Part of the ship’s frame collapsed behind her with a thunderous crash.

Minutes passed. He didn’t come.

At last she scrubbed off her tears and breathed in deep and strode into the fumes, staring through the gray for any sign of life. She found a body. Tag lay in the sand at the foot of the ship, frame surrounded by burning debris. Grabbing his legs, Rey dragged him out too, grunting, head pounding from the effort.

When at last they emerged from the cloud she paused to examine him. His skin was tinged blue, except for sooty patches singed red across his face. He lay lifeless, and she brought her head close to his.

Still breathing.

And so she fell down cross-legged, slumping over and ripping apart Tag’s well-organized inventory for bacta, helpless to stop her own weeping.

.

Tag awoke covered in scabs and dried bacta gel, his body sore everywhere, his beard clumsily shorn off, his voice raw. “What the _hell_ happened.”

“You tell me,” Rey responded from outside.

He pushed himself up and recognized the interior of a fallen AT-AT, one of a set he and Rey had chosen as a backup shelter. “Our base caught fire?”

“A fire you ran right into.” Rey now stalked inside to his bed, holding a cup of water.

“I don’t ...” He furrowed his brow, struggling for words. “I don’t recall coming back out.”

“You didn’t,” she said. “You fell off the ship and I had to pull you away.”

She thrust the cup into his hands. He pushed himself up to take it, his frown deepening.

“What were you thinking?”

“What were _you_ thinking?” Rey shot back. “The ship was _on fire,_ and you ran up to your kriffing laser.”

“I was delivering justice.”

“You were being an idiot!”

“It was _logic_ , the only way they couldn’t pose a threat again. You’ll note that I made the shot—”

“I don’t _care_ whether you made the kriffing shot!”

“It was my choice—”

“ _I_ had to run into the fumes and pull you out—”

“That was your choice, and frankly it was a kriffing awful one.”

“I ... _excuse me_?”

He sipped the water gingerly, wincing at the contact. “You got everything out, I assume. The blasters and other necessities.”

“The stuff? Yes, but—”

“That was enough for you to survive,” Tag broke in coolly. “You’d be more than prepared for life on your own.”

Rey stared down at him, brow twisting. Her tone was ice when she spoke. “And I was meant to leave you there like garbage?”

“It would have been only logical.”

“The way my parents left me?”

The strength went out of him, and he thudded back against the floor.

“It was so easy for them,” she said, her own shoulders softening. “They said they could leave me anywhere and nobody’d come for me. No one would care.”

“Parents lie,” he murmured.

“Did yours?”

He dodged her gaze and looked down into his cup, at water rippling from the shaking of his hands, his eyes heavy once again.

“My father said I’d rule the galaxy one day,” he answered wryly. “I leave you to draw your own conclusions.”

.

Rey left him half-asleep, whimpering every so often from pain, and she went out to scavenge while calculating the credits she’d need for healing if he wound up with a full-blown infection. When she returned he was sitting outside, propped up against the wall of his AT-AT and fiddling with his binoculars.

“It occurs to me,” he said as soon as she approached, “that I said many things this morning but not the most important one.”

“And what would that be?”

“Thank you.”

Throat clogging with inconvenient feelings, she nodded and dropped the day’s haul in front of him before rummaging through her own AT-AT’s contents. She plucked out the bracelet and returned to Tag, the pulsing blue gem heavy in her hand. “I salvaged this too.”

He flinched, a barely noticeable flicker of the brow, and took it from her.

“Doesn’t look Imperial,” he remarked, turning it over. “The pulsing suggests a, what, a signal of some sort—”

“For once in your life, Tag, don’t deflect. Please.”

His eyes slowly rose to meet hers. “How long have you known?”

“That someone’s still coming back for you?”

His fist snapped shut.

“Years. I know that’s a beacon, and I know you’re not so stupid as to keep one without knowing who’s on the other side. Or,” she amended, shifting awkwardly, “who was on the other side. At one point.”

“I should’ve thrown this out.”

“Tag—“

“No one’s coming for me,” he huffed out in a bitter chuckle, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Anyone who would ...” As he trailed off, Rey widened her eyes in encouragement, and he sighed. “The man who would, who knew the key to decrypting this signal, must be dead somewhere in this desert.”

“But you’re not like me. You came from somewhere, with someone who wanted you,” she pressed. “Why don’t you go back?”

“Has one of your outpost friends told you about bounty hunters yet?”

“They scavenge for money like we do,” she explained warily. “Only they ...”

“Trade people instead of parts, yes,” he finished. “Let’s just say I’m important enough to be held for a significant ransom—“

“How many portions are we talking?”

“Enough to buy Jakku,” he snorted. “Ironically, I’m also sufficiently irrelevant that no one would still pay the price.”

“... Oh.”

“It’s all terribly tragic,” he observed, sarcasm sharp as the dagger he had up his sleeve even now.

They spent the rest of the night in quiet, scrubbing Rey’s haul clean. She stole glances at him the whole way through and discovered he was doing the same.

“I did mean the thank you,” he said quietly at the end of their work. “I can’t honestly say I’m sorry.”

Something possessed Rey to lean forward and kiss him, to press featherlight lips to his forehead. Then she retreated to her own AT-AT, blinking back tears and trying to accept there were stories she’d never hear.

.

Here is a story Rey never heard.

They’d briefly been robbed of the luxury of taking a day off together, and so Tag went alone on his next visit to the Outpost. He fashioned a coat of black, a fireproof fabric he had previously used to wrap explosives. He scrubbed the ash off every centimeter of his swoop bike. He shaved his cheeks properly, carefully, revealing eerily sharp angles. He made an extra stop to augment his wares.

When he arrived at the Outpost he felt the town go silent the instant his boot met the sand. In one smooth deliberate motion he gathered up his haul and moved quietly into the line for the trading stand, looking through the other scavengers rather than at them. His hair glimmered openly in the sun. At the edge of his periphery a curl of smoke still floated lazily on the horizon.

“Plutt,” he said, accent snobbish and perfect. “I want five portions for these 74-Z bike controls, near-perfect condition ...”

He briskly sold off all the new parts he and Rey had scavenged since the wreck, putting them forth one at a time, enjoying the onlookers’ stares.

_You have to let them know, boy. Make them know you’re more poisonous than ever._

“And I’ve also got this.” He casually handed over a dark brown block. “The novelty should be worth something.”

Plutt grabbed it and held it up in the sunlight to reveal bright silver streaks, and gasps went up through the crowd that had collected around them. The arsonist off-worlders had flown about in a jumped-up sandcrawler, easily recognizable for both its energy shields and its physical armor, a brown-and-silver alloy of strong metals and—

“Cortosis,” Plutt spat. “This stuff is indestructible. Can’t break it with blaster shots, lightsabers, even lightning.”

Tag listened to his lecture with utter boredom spelled out on his face. Plutt resumed gaping at the blackened chunk, melted down and resolidified with a hundred visible cracks. “What the _hell_ did you do to them?”

“I think it should be obvious,” Tag replied with the faintest hint of an insouciant sneer.

“ _But how_?”

“You should ask _why_ ,” he said, voice treacherously soft and layered with violence. “Because they set fire to my base. They threatened me. They threatened _Rey_. Of _course_ I incinerated them with one shot.”

Tag glanced around, all the spectators shrinking away from him.

“Keep it for free,” he said, shrugging and marching back to his bike without another word. His hair glinted flame-red in the blazing sun. The black swirled about him, odd and otherworldly.

.

Rey wondered why the others shied away from her the next time she made it to the outpost. Still they warmed up again to her smile— just as irresistible and ten times more pleasant than Tag’s smirk, if she did say so herself— and she returned home armed with a saga’s worth of new stories.

“So then Darth Vader pushes himself up while his clothes are still smoking from the lightning, and he plucks the Emperor up in his arms like a baby from his crib, and he staggers down from the throne over to the catwalk, and he— listen, put down your spoon for a second— he shouts out that no one will ever hurt his son again and _throws the Emperor down the pit_ , and then he lets Luke remove the mask, and it’s awful and vulnerable but tender still, right, because he’s sacrificed himself but at least it’s for Luke, he’ll do anything for his son, and Luke escapes with his body as the Death Star explodes into a billion pieces behind them, and— Tag, you don’t seem very impressed.”

Tag arched an eyebrow at her and then returned to his dinner.

“But it really happened!”

“I’m aware.”

She slapped his arm. “And you never thought to tell me?”

“It’s not that happy an ending if you think of, oh, all the Imperial soldiers stuck on the Death Star. Conscripts who didn’t mean to be there. All those families ripped apart in an instant.”

“So what passes for a happy ending in your head?”

He eloquently rolled his eyes.

“You must have a favorite story,” she wheedled, wrapping her arms around her knees as she curled up at the foot of his blanket. After a few minutes he relented, putting down his plate with a melodramatic sigh.

“Once upon a time, on a planet far far away, there stood a stone castle, surrounded by walls and moats and mist. On its jeweled throne sat a king, iron-jawed, and the pronouncements of his voice rang throughout the whole land ...”

Tag’s voice rang throughout his AT-AT, the phrases rolling off his tongue. His usual accent broadened into a softer lilt, and Rey held her breath, spellbound by the force of the music.

“But he was ruthless, this king. He enslaved the people he conquered and demanded tribute of precious metals and minerals and knowledge and labor. He took their young mages— Force-sensitives, as you’d know them— and pressed them into service, twisted them into weapons fit only for the slaughter.”

“Is this a real story?” Rey interrupted.

“It’s a fairy tale, a legend of sorts,” he clarified. “But legends draw their inspiration from life.”

She nodded, satisfied, and Tag took up his soliloquy again. “The king ruled even his castle with such cruelty, a tyrant to his wife and lovers and children. And it’s one of these children, the eldest son, who grows up knowing the king’s abuse and neglect and in turn hears the cries of his tortured subjects.”

“What does he do?”

“At first he tries to reason with his father, to no avail. He pleads the people’s cause in open court, but his father answers only with mocking. Over the years the people rally around the son, who marshals an army of his own—” and here Tag embellished the technical details, eliciting her laughter as he described fearsome ships and mighty blasters all strikingly like Imperial weaponry— “and he bides his time. He contemplates his choice— the pain and dishonor of killing family on one hand, the duty and glory of killing this king on the other. But there is no real conflict. He finds his answer and a weak chink in his father’s shields, and with hope in his heart and _fire_ in his eyes, the young prince strikes. He strikes his father down and becomes more powerful than the old king had ever hoped to be.”

“And they all lived happily ever after,” Rey concluded merrily.

“If you’d like,” Tag said with an enigmatic smile. “That’s the version we told the young kids, to keep them from ... getting ideas.”

She wrinkled up her forehead. “What’s the other version?”

“Well, you’ll notice for all his pretty words we never learned precisely what the young prince intended in his heart.”

Rey groaned.

“So,” he continued, “it’s quite possible that he was motivated less by goodwill towards the people than by jealousy of his old father. And it’s quite possible either way that he’d be corrupted by time and turn ruthless in his old age, and cruel. And it’s possible—” his voice turned even softer, pulling Rey to lean in— “that he neglected his own children. And so, a baby boy rocks himself to sleep tonight in the royal nursery, alone, unattended ... With no one to see the fire in his eyes.”

Rey recoiled with a shiver and an accusatory glare. “I don’t think you’ve grasped the concept of a ‘happy ending.’”

He snickered to himself, picking up his glass of powdered blue milk and swirling it like a wine worth smelling, settling in for a lengthy intellectual argument. “On the contrary, if you simply adjust your perspective ...”

.

Over time their paths diverged. Rey still sold bits and pieces of everything, while Tag honed in on a core business of arms dealing. He traded weapons and their key parts, strangely fascinated by the instruments of Imperial mass destruction. His hauls grew smaller yet more profitable as he handled volatile chemicals with confidence and defused mines no one else on Jakku dared touch. Rey refused to dwell on this.

One night he left at dusk and returned past dawn, without a single new part strapped to his bike. He dismounted, cloak fastened tight around him, and marched straight into his AT-AT. After a few moments’ deliberation Rey knocked on his door and ducked inside.

He had folded his cloak neatly by the entrance. It looked intact, though the black would hide most stains. It took her a moment to identify the strange scent lingering in the folds: strong liquor.

“I spent the night in Cratertown,” he crisply explained, wiping the worst of the grime off his skin. She examined him carefully and found no redness in his eyes or unsteadiness in his step, not a hair out of place. “I went to a bar and made a gamble.”

She found nothing odd but a collarbone bruise, peeking out from under his tunic.

“Did you win?”

“Close enough.” With a lofty lift of the chin, he pulled a jingling pouch out of his pocket and set it on a makeshift table between them. “Those are credits, though I might consider alternative currencies in the future.”

Rey stared at the bag, as valuable as the finest hauls she had ever gathered. “Alternatives? You mean portions?”

“Of something, yes,” Tag muttered, lips barely moving. Fixed on the pouch, his eyes glimmered, and his eyebrow quirked at some joke Rey didn’t catch. She stored it in her mind as one more mystery and bid him good night.

.

The glint in his eyes worked its way into her dreams, its shine both victorious and acidic. She caught the same glow at their next excursion to Niima, as his silvertongue swayed Plutt to pay double for a rusty dented donal capitator.

Rey slipped an arm around his, linking their elbows as they swaggered back out of the Outpost, and with a sly smile she lowered her voice. “You were wrong.”

“Impossible,” he retorted. “What about?”

“The Force. You’ve got it too.”

Tag broke from her and stopped still. “I beg your pardon?”

“I can feel it,” she declared, pausing a few steps ahead, “every time you bend someone to your will.”

“I—” Tag tripped over his words. “I don’t bend people to my will!”

She gave him a look.

“I merely ... recondition them to be more open-minded about my requests.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“With my rhetoric!”

“And some help from the Force,” she said smugly. “You’re subtle about it though, it’s hard getting a read on you.”

He blinked, and with a start Rey realized he was restraining tears.

“I ... don’t mean to insult your oratory, it’s the best on Jakku—”

“I’m fine, Rey.” He strode forward to pass her, eyes now dry again. “Even better than expected.”

.

Rey poured the bottle of sand out for him and only laughed a little at his scowling. The particles refused to obey him, his snappish orders for once producing no effect.

Yet it seemed to her that Tag gained power everywhere else. He deployed devilish new tactics when he sparred with her, exploiting weaknesses she had never before noticed. He dared more at the Outpost, blatantly tilting trades in his favor. He took off for Cratertown and returned with bags of credits, won through what he would only describe as “honest work, from my point of view.” Rey assumed he was swindling gamblers out of their money, and she marveled at how well he must have sweet-talked them to come home only lightly bruised.

These changes struck deep within her. Rey sensed new edges hidden in Tag’s words, a cocky weight to his step even when he had no other audience. But perhaps he had stayed what he always was, and the only shift was in her own perspective. Rey searched for words to describe all this, to explain the way her skin flushed warm when he drew near ...

“Haughty.” She called him out with mischief in her eyes when he finished haggling at a stall. Heads turned throughout Niima’s market, and he gave her a curious look.

“What did you just call me?”

“You’ve got such a haughty look nowadays,” she explained. “Even more than before.”

“Ah. ‘Haughty.’ As in the adjective.”

“Well, yes, what else would it ...” Rey screwed up her face in sudden understanding. “No, I didn’t think of the noun. Obviously! I mean, you’re not a ... ”

She trailed off, abruptly struck mute by his long limbs and sharp angles, his pale skin and gleaming hair. He shook his head in a show of self-pity: “Just what every eligible young man wants to hear.”

But he then carried on seemingly unaffected, simply proceeding to the next vendor of interest. Rey trailed him with burning cheeks.

.

She began stumbling over her role in their repartee, plagued by a persistent case of nerves. Tag threw her curious looks, and Rey felt like a scrap of a child all over again.

.

“I just checked the budget,” Tag announced at sunrise, sitting outside and poring over the cracked screen of his datapad, “and we can secure another proper base. A chunk of the _Amity_ might do, though the name leaves something to be desired—”

“I thought I might stay here,” she broke in.

He glanced up. “I suppose this location has its advantages. I was thinking of the other side of Cratertown, which would lengthen the commute to Niima, and our accounts would certainly thank us for staying ...”

He trailed off, waiting for her opinion.

“You can go if you’d like,” she said, forcing cheer, “and I’ll stay here.”

“Ah.”

His eyes went soft and unfocused. Rey’s breath tangled in her throat.

“After all,” she said, still sustaining her smile, “I’m older than you were when you took me in. It’s about time I lifted the burden.”

Tag set aside his datapad, creases embedding themselves in his forehead. “I’ve never intended to make you feel that way. Unwanted.”

“I don’t,” Rey nearly said. She nearly let a whole speech slip out her lips: “It’s not you, it’s me, and I’ve no right to want the things I do ...”

“Why did you buy me,” she said, “really?”

“Because ...” He paused and then began again, voice now ringing with truth. “Because of how you stood behind your parents. You cowered, really, like they were shields.”

“That’s how children are,” she replied with a frown.

“It is,” he agreed. “But you also stood apart from them. Out of their reach.”

“So?”

Tag tensed his jaw. “So it reminded me of myself.”

He exhaled hard at the confession, and she crept closer to curl up by him, the way she always used to. “Will you be fine if I go?”

Tag gently touched her hair. “You were always meant to make it out, Rey.”

The stunned look didn’t leave his eyes.

.

He loaded her up with as many rations as he could spare, and a set of long-range comlinks for emergencies, and the newer of their two vaporators, and enough spare parts to build a new speeder if her old one failed. He gave her blasters, the staffs, and two grenades he brought home from Cratertown one night, though they were new tech from off-world and would have wrung at least twenty portions out of Plutt.

Then there was the lightsaber, the black and silver cylinder she had saved from the fire. He presented it to her just before his departure, casually revealing it was an ancient Jedi weapon he had brought her from the church.

“A _what_?”

“Always keep it pointing this way, not the reverse. It’s not as safe or far-reaching as a blaster,” he said, “but I trust you not to lop off your own limbs.”

“And if I do, you’ve given me enough bacta to regrow them,” she joked.

“If you do, I’ll just have to learn to make prosthetics, won’t I?”

She squinted up at his smirk and the resolve behind it, and then threw herself at him, wrapping his ribs in a tight embrace. He returned it, holding her close and bending down to lay a kiss on her head.

.

Tag moved into the _Amity_ and stuck to his well-organized routine. He went out at night and worked and returned in the morning with his haul. When he came back with a pile of salvaged goods he sat himself down with his rags and busied himself with the cleaning, his ship huge and hollow around him.

One night he untied the cord holding together his old belongings and pulled out the beacon. Its gem had gone dark.

.

Rey adjusted to the sudden silence in her AT-AT with extra visits to the Outpost, mingling easily with Jakku’s other denizens. She achieved something approximating friendship with two human scavengers named Devi and Strunk, a mismatched couple about her age.

Devi was short and bony, with clipped blonde hair and incisive eyes. Strunk had at least two feet on her, yet he always looked to Devi to speak first, being a little slow-witted himself. Together the three of them chattered about their grand plans of making it off Jakku, of taking their scavenging talents out into the galaxy and hunting treasure across the stars. When Rey returned home from those talks, she would pull out her macrobinoculars and turn them upwards, gazing through Jakku’s pure atmosphere and out into space, mapping constellations in her mind.

Every time she arrived at Niima she asked after Tag, only to hear she had missed him.

.

Devi and Strunk talked endlessly of exploration, both in space and on Jakku itself. In time Rey let them coax her into a hive of scum and villainy, a place of mysterious sin where Tag had never let her go, citing her youth. She hid a few extra weapons on her person, filled a pocket with credits and rode with them into Cratertown.

The town stood on a strip of desert, flat with mountains rolling far in the background. A motley assortment of beige buildings lined the main street in varying states of disrepair. Smoke and a cloud of liquor hung heavy in the air. Sabacc games went down openly on the sidewalks, and the start of a brawl echoed in the distance.

“It’s no Canto Bight,” Devi declared, stopping in the center of the street, “but it’s the closest this kriffing planet gets to life.”

Rey watched it all wide-eyed, trying to digest the scene and keeping an eye out for a flash of red hair while Strunk ushered her into a cantina. It was dark and crowded with more species of aliens than she’d ever seen, some dressed nicely enough that they had to be from off world, all bantering over a dizzying array of drinks. Rey picked her way through and hopped up onto a stool at the bar, holding her head high the way Tag would.

“We’ll have three pints of Ardees,” Devi hollered over the noise.

“No,” Rey protested. She surveyed the drinks around her, squinting in the darkness. “I’ll have ... that one.”

She pointed at an oil can that another patron was drinking, a human man she’d never met before. The bartender shrugged and passed her the same drink, but Strunk started chuckling deep in his throat.

“What?” Rey demanded. She looked down in her drink and found nothing obviously wrong with it, besides the foamy bits that looked like soap bubbles drifting on the amber liquid.

“That, my dear,” Devi informed her dryly, “is a local specialty. We’d better order some food to go with it ...”

Rey took a cautious sip and choked, nearly spitting it out. “I could run my speeder on this!”

“Welcome to Jakku,” Strunk said, clapping her on the back. “No one’d blame you if you threw it right out.”

Rey narrowed her eyes at the can and took on the challenge.

.

Rey silently thanked the Force, which had apparently bestowed upon her the ability to handle even disgustingly strong liquor. Despite drinking the whole can she didn’t crumple into complete dissolution, unlike some of the other revelers around her. Instead she floated in a jolly, tipsy phase where she liked the warm Jakku air, felt it like a comforting arm around her shoulders. Where she stumbled outside and looked up into the stars and prophesied aloud that she’d see them all up close one day.

The next time she went to Niima Outpost a new shape stood out in the skyline, a ship poorly hidden under a tarp. According to rumor, Plutt had scammed it off the Irving Boys. Rey ducked underneath the cloth and promptly identified the ship as a piece of garbage— specifically, an ancient model of Corellian light fighter that looked ready to shatter to pieces at the slightest touch.

She reached out and felt it solid, if a little grimy, under her hands. It felt like fate.

Like an invitation.

.

The three of them drifted back to Cratertown as celebration for weathering a particularly vicious desert storm. Nearly vibrating with excitement, Rey slipped in and installed herself at the bar with her oil can before Devi and Strunk had finished locking down their transports.

“You.”

Turning her head, Rey recognized the same man from last time, still sitting in the same seat with his own can. She now took the time to properly appreciate him, slouched artfully against the counter. He had tousled dark brown curls and an aquiline nose, and an innate gentleness in the curve of his lips.

“You’re the girl who held her Knockback Nectar like a professional,” he recalled, re-angling himself for their chat. His accent was an easygoing twang, safely different from ...

“That’s me,” she said, returning his friendly smile.

“Kriffing bitter, isn’t it?” he said, grimacing in sympathy. “Bet it’s sweeter on your lips though.”

The friendly spark in his eyes now suggested something more, and a blush suffused Rey’s cheeks. Yet Devi and Strunk arrived before she could respond, sweeping her into conversation over Plutt’s new ship.

Again Rey drank down her nectar with ease— except for how she flushed each time she raised it to her mouth, and how she licked her lips carefully, newly aware of her audience. She contributed to the discussion on the light fighter, on the myriad repairs it’d need to be airworthy again. The liquor left her engineering skills perfectly intact.

Yet her prudence wavered the longer she sat at the bar.

When Devi and Strunk declared their night over, Rey verified that her credits and weapons were all where she expected, checked that the Force still responded promptly to her call, and then asked them to leave without her. The mysterious stranger was still nursing his drink in his designated seat— he’d left it earlier but returned soon enough— and he donned a dazzling smile upon realizing she was free.

He moved to the seat next to her and picked up their conversation again, by turns teasing and flattering. She did her best to match his charm, giddy like she was sledding down a dune.

“And that was your first time drinking?” he laughed. “You’re a little innocent, aren’t you?”

“I know enough!” She dropped her jaw, exaggerating the insult.

“Do you?” he asked, reaching out to run his thumb across her chin. “No other firsts you wanna get out of the way?”

“Rey?”

The voice startled Rey to her feet. She whipped her head around to see Tag in tightly fitted pants and a sleeveless black tunic she’d never seen before, striding forward and glaring at them both in a far more familiar manner. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Tag immediately retorted.

“I was ...” She grasped for her oil can but knocked it over. It clanged on the ground.

He snorted. “I see.”

“For once keep your nose outta my business, Tag,” the stranger snarled.

Tag ignored him in favor of Rey, looking down his nose at her. “Are you wholly aware of what you’re arranging with Stridath here?”

“Of course I am!” She blinked. “Wait, how do you mean?”

“How much money have you still got on you?” he asked, as if that would clarify everything.

She fumbled with the credits in her pocket; math had always come more easily to Tag than her. “About ... fifteen credits?”

Rey turned her head back just in time to see the stranger’s gentleness abruptly shatter.

“In that case, she’s all yours,” he jeered, directing his taunt at Tag. He knocked back the rest of his can, then pushed his chair and stalked away, features twisted in irritation.

Rey blinked again, now shoving back tears. “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“Nothing,” Tag murmured a long minute later, hand light, almost wary on her shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

.

Hands on her waist, Tag lifted Rey onto his current bike— a slower vehicle, but fitted with safety features to mitigate any drunken mistakes— and then pulled on his cloak and got onto her own speeder. He led her to her AT-AT, glancing over his shoulder periodically to check she was still intact. When they arrived she stayed sitting on her perch for a time, a confused frown pasted on her face.

“I still don’t get what happened,” she complained again as Tag approached her side, extending a hand to help her dismount.

“I know, Rey.” He ushered her onto her bed inside, turned on her lamp and then stepped into her makeshift kitchen, puttering about with her burner. She sat in silence until he handed her a plate of bread and rehydrated vegetables.

“Thank you for skipping the fork and spoon.”

“I notice they’re collecting dust,” came his wry reply.

“That way they’re useful.”

He rolled his eyes and then walked away, hesitating at the door. He adjusted his course to her vaporator, drawing her a cool cup of water. She took the cup and contemplated the night’s events.

“If he wanted,” she groused, “I could’ve bought him two more drinks with my credits.”

Tag took the seat opposite her with a sigh, knees nearly touching here in the cramped space. “I’m glad you didn’t. He shouldn’t get that drunk before ... whatever it is you wanted.”

Rey shrugged. “I didn’t think you had to be sober to kiss.”

“To ... _kiss_?”

Tag’s mouth was hanging open.

“Yes,” she said sullenly, taking a vicious bite out of her bread. “Devi and Strunk spend half their lives making out, I just wanted to know how it felt.”

She didn’t have to look up to know he was pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to will away a tension headache.

“I suppose there was an easier solution,” she mused. “ _You_ could always kiss me.”

“I could,” he retorted. “I’ve got two functioning lips and everything.”

“Better you than anyone else on Jakku!”

“Have you considered that there’s a whole galaxy waiting out there for you, so you _needn’t_ kiss anyone on Jakku?”

“You _should_ kiss me.”

Rey awaited his kiss— or, more likely, a cogent counterargument. Instead he simply stared at her.

“Would you like to hear something about my home planet?”

“Always.” The answer slipped out before she even thought through the question.

“There were marriages, which could involve love but only incidentally. There were common flings, tumbling in hay and scrambling into pantries. But the grandest sort of romance, when you were deeply in love? Those took _courtship_.”

“Courtship,” she repeated, testing the word on her tongue.

“There were balls,” he recalled, gradually sliding into his other, softer accent. “The servants would sneak me in. And all the adults— of noble lineage— would have to pick partners and dance, just out of social custom. But do you know how you could find the ones who wanted it to mean more?”

“How?”

“Like this.” Tag folded back the sleeve of his cloak, brushed his lips over his wrist, and then extended the hand to Rey. “And if you felt the same ...”

Rey lifted her own wrist and kissed it before reaching out to take his hand. In synchrony they joined arms, fingers folding around each other’s forearms, wrists touching.

“And then you’d dance,” he said. “And if you wanted each other, then you’d keep your wrists touching the whole time, and that symbolized kissing your lover, over and over and never letting go.”

He let go of Rey’s arm, pulling back to fold his own fingers together. The lamp flickered, his gaze intensifying in the low light.

“And then what?” she whispered.

“And then the dance would end, and the subterfuge began. You’d pick locks and bribe maids and engage in whatever intrigue it took to get to your beloved’s bed. Not while they were in it, though.”

“Oh?”

“No, you’d only slip in and leave a gift on the pillow. Unsigned if you could manage it, something only they’d recognize you by. Flowers. Art. Weapons, for the more ambitious couples,” he added with a grin. “Something to declare your bond.”

“And then what?” Rey entreated, the yearning bare in her voice. Her wrist burned where his had grazed it.

His stare flickered down to her lips.

“And then it’s time for you to start recovering from all your revelry,” he said, cloth rustling as he rose to his feet. “Go ahead and rest.”

She leaned back. Her weariness suddenly tugged at her— mixed with a suspicious nudge from the Force— and she let sleep draw her in.

.

Rey awoke in an empty AT-AT with a jumble of memories. Once some of the images started to make sense, so did the hot crush of embarrassment. With a groan, she buried her aching head under the coverlet Tag must have draped over her.

.

Rey pledged to avoid Cratertown. Niima she couldn’t escape just yet, and so she returned to the Outpost. The tattered tarp covering the Corellian light fighter had slid off to only hide half of it, and the ship called to Rey like a beacon.

“Strunk and I went in and ripped out that kriffing compressor,” Devi reported, sidling up beside her as she browsed the market. “But I can’t make heads or tails outta the hyperdrive.”

While listening to the damage report Rey ran her fingers over the wares of the nearest stall— crocheted lace doilies made by a village on the other hemisphere, all useless and far too pretty for Jakku. She kept her eyes down and played it calm, belying the hammering in her heart.

.

Rey made her repairs, swapping out the ancient Corellian motivator for something a little sleeker, checking the navcomputer’s unconventional predictions against memories of her flight simulator. She rubbed shoulders with exploring off-worlders, trading information about Jakku’s poor offerings for tips on treasures buried on other planets. She tracked a course for herself amidst the stars.

.

Rey dreamed of portions, piles of food far as the eye can see, enough to buy all Jakku. A spaceship’s whine jerked her from sleep.

Grabbing a grenade in one hand and a blaster in the other, she dashed out of her AT-AT and right into the Corellian ship, currently completing its landing sequence, its rear lights brilliant against the sunset. When the boarding ramp dropped down, Devi swaggered out. “Time to go, girl.”

Rey narrowed her eyes. “We hadn’t settled our plans yet.”

“I just heard a not-so-friendly conversation at the Outpost. Apparently, Plutt stole this piece of trash from the Irving Boys, who stole from Ducain, who tracked it here and would rather like it back ...”

“So you’re stealing it before Ducain can,” Rey finished.

“ _We’re_ stealing it,” Devi corrected. “Unless you’re backing out.”

“I. I need more time—”

“Plutt’s thugs will swarm any minute. Look, we can do this with you or without you, but you’ve got to tell us now.”

Rey bit her lip and looked to her AT-AT.

“Hey,” Devi called, her face uncharacteristically gentle. “What’ve you still got here?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Rey turned back to her. “I want the pilot’s seat. Engineering decisions are my call. If we’re split three ways on destinations, my choice takes priority.”

“Deal.”

Rey nodded and ran back inside, gathering up the emergency weapons and supplies she always kept prepared. It took her two trips onto the ship to load them all. The last time she entered her AT-AT she paused, lifted her long-distance comlink, and paged Tag.

“Rey? What’s wrong—”

Static obscured the signal, an early sign of a brewing desert storm. Rey tried again, again, before finally giving up and scrawling a coded explanation on her wall beneath her tally marks. She dragged a stack of shelves in front to hide it from casual observers and then removed it again to add a promise to return with her riches, and two other words.

“ _Love, Rey._ ”

She shoved the shelves back over the message and sprinted out to the ship.

.

For years Rey had trained on simulations, memorizing the placement of a cockpit’s controls under her fingers. But almost nothing compared to the freefall high of advancing a safe distance into space and typing in coordinates, of grabbing onto Devi’s arm and waiting to burst into hyperspace, the stars all blurring around them ...

The hyperdrive stalled.

Rey leapt out of her seat, sprinting to the motivator. The lights switched off, and the whole ship gave out a groan.

“The controls got overridden,” Devi yelled, dragging Rey back to the cockpit. Strunk was mashing the buttons wildly, with no effect.

Rey craned her neck up and found a huge ship looming above them, a model from the Old Republic— though only an expert would guess it after all the mods. Their light fighter drifted ever closer to the ship, now pulled by a tractor beam, shuddering as it snapped into place. Then came a strange hiss.

“Sleeping gas,” Rey whispered, unshakably sure. She clambered back out of the cockpit again, now heading for the lounge. “We had gas masks in here, right? I saw them—”

“I sold them all,” Strunk stuttered out. “Plutt paid good money.”

The other two looked at him in horror. Devi passed out first, and then Strunk went down heavily beside her. Rey fought the creeping numbness, dashing madly about the ship for masks, for an escape route that wasn’t there, fighting the darkness as long as she could.

.

Rey woke up hot, lying on nothing but sand. Gales roared just outside, battering the tarp tied down around her, and an abrupt crack of lightning split her ears. The air was hot and parching.

Classic Jakku.

She nearly collapsed back into place, never to move again, but instead she shoved herself up and took in her surroundings. She had been dropped amidst piles of trash, scattered droid parts with exposed wires, damaged almost beyond recognition. Around her were four walls of tarp, one of which was cut in two.  

Her hands were bound with cuffs, her neck with a shock collar. She pushed the flap open and collided with Unkar Plutt.

“There you are, my girl,” he said, his gravelly voice turned sugar-sweet. “I’ve waited for you.”

She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “What do you want, Plutt?”

“So quick to plan my murder,” he said, giving her a toothy smile. “Why don’t you hear me out first?”

“I’m listening.”

“First thing. Drop any dreams of rebellion.” Plutt lifted his fleshy wrist to show a button chained around it. He pressed it, and Rey winced at the sudden shock to her throat. “It’d be satisfying to knock you off right here, I won’t deny it.”

“Is that what you did to ...”

“Your co-pilots? Obviously.”

“You set us up,” she breathed. “Ducain wasn’t back, was he?”

“No. Just another connection of mine. A bounty hunter with a tractor beam and an appreciation for easy snacks.”

“ _What do you want._ ”

He threw a datapad at her, and she scrambled forth to catch it and read its cramped lettering. One number stood out to her, uncomfortably large ...

“That’s your debt.”

Rey squawked in protest. “That Corellian trash isn’t worth anything close to this!”

“I didn’t factor in the ship you stole yet. That’s just my estimate of how much you and Tag have swindled me out of over the years.”

She looked down, and suddenly it seemed entirely too low.

“You’re mine ‘til you pay that back,” Plutt gloated. “I’ve got you now. And I’ve hired some off-world debt collectors, with bounties to chase you down until you pay it in full. Won’t help if a turbolaser happens to blow up the concession stand. Or if my mind slips and I mysteriously forgive you for a minute.”

Rey stood dumbstruck, barely able to think over the thunder outside and the ice in her veins.

“Bounties on you,” he said, “ _and_ your boyfriend.”

“He’s not—” She forced the words past her strangled throat. “You shouldn’t punish him too. He’s not tied up with me.”

“Funny,” Plutt said, his voice a humorless growl. “That’s the one argument he didn’t try.”

.

Rey had never loved freedom so much.

Plutt ignored her protests and sent her out in the blinding sandstorm, and so she rode out on a rickety old bike he loaned her, its engines stuttering as the grit gummed it up. Though she had smothered her head in scarves and donned a clunky set of goggles, she still had to squint and gag on the sand. It got everywhere, flung about by the wind, pelting her skin.

With a curfew of sunset, Rey worked in the worst heat of daytime and amidst the overpicked ruins just around Niima, competing with Teedos for territory. Most of the small valuable pieces she and Tag favored had long since been looted, so she hauled out large clunky parts that strained her back and were worth little. Plutt paid her even less than that.

Every so often he sent a little spark to bite her neck, just to show he could.

The number burned itself in Rey’s head, and even in her dreams she raced to do her calculations. If she could just talk Plutt into loosening her leash, she could extend her scavenging to more profitable areas. She could get paid extra for repair work. She could go to Cratertown and throw some sabacc games, leaning on the Force to guess rivals’ cards. The sabacc made her think of Tag, who was probably trying his luck right now to help bail her out. He’d surely reduce the main debt by a quarter or third by emptying his backup stores; then she could keep the interest under control.

He never came.

.

Rey passed the Corellian light fighter daily. Sitting empty next to the Outpost, still half-exposed by its flapping tarp, it taunted her.

Plutt kept her penned in the same small compartment, a back room of his stand where she spent every night alone but for his guttural snores and the unrelenting snap of thunder outside. She counted the days, then the minutes and seconds, desperate to sleep. When rest eluded her, she settled for meditation. For imagining a sea replenished by endless rain, a young child soaked through and wading through knee-level puddles in an island town. He spun about in the water as the downpour washed him clean.

Rey counted a thousand reasons why Tag wouldn’t have made it out to Niima just yet. He could have been held up by the desert storm. He could have lured all Plutt’s debt collectors to Jakku, busily mind-tricking them out of the deal. He could have blithely ignored Plutt’s threat and started construction on a new turbolaser. He could have found a ship of his own to rescue them both, he could have ventured into the old haunted Empire laboratory for treasure and lost his way, he could have broken his vaporator and died of thirst, he could ...

He could have finally determined she wasn’t worth the trouble.

That thought wrenched her heart out of place. As the storm raved loud across the desert, the heat whirled rabid in her own mind.

.

The storm died down two weeks after her return to Jakku. Rey quieted too, coming to terms with Plutt’s whims, making herself agreeable far as she could. She kept her head down and did her work, bringing all her wit and resourcefulness to bear, devoted to making it out in two years at the most. Plutt started appraising her offerings more honestly, allowing her free half-portions even as he counted the full worth of the parts towards her debt. Hope flared in her heart, and she nurtured it carefully.

She dragged a heavy load into Niima one day just minutes before dusk, the largest she had ever managed, parts balanced precariously on her bike and strapped together with clever knots. Plutt’s eyes bulged at the sight, and he threw in two extra portions.

“By the way,” he tacked on at the end of their bargaining, “your debt’s been paid in full.”

She whirled about but saw Tag nowhere.

“He left hours back,” Plutt snorted. “Proudest I’ve ever seen him.”

She ran.

.

Rey reached Tag’s base past midnight, having bought Plutt’s bike and raced home to swap it with her own proper speeder, half-buried in sand but otherwise intact. Upon arriving at Tag’s fraction of a ship, an isolated hull on the desert, she knocked hard on the blast door and called his name.

No response.

She ran through all the keycodes he had ever used back on their Destroyer. The first four failed silently. The fifth triggered an alarm, just loud enough for her to hear. She stepped back with a curse ...

Right into a blaster, jammed between her shoulder blades. On reflex she spun and rammed her fist forth.

“... Tag?”

“... Rey.” He holstered the blaster and brushed his jaw, assessing the damage.

“Did I hurt you?”

“The bone’s not broken.”

He stepped away from her, and she looked him up and down. There was no visible change; he wore the same black cloak and carried the same blasters as ever. His smirk was missing, but that could have meant nothing.

“How can I help you?”

She blinked at the strangely clinical question. “I ... I need to thank you for paying the debt off. Where’d you find money that fast?”

He shrugged, looking over her shoulder at the blast doors. “Here and there.”

She snorted. “That’s even vaguer than usual.”

“I made deals I ordinarily wouldn’t. They paid off.”

In the ensuing silence, Rey let out a nervous chuckle.

“You didn’t ... sell yourself instead of me, did you?”

“Not literally, no.”

His accent was crisper than ever, yet flat.

“If that’s all,” he said, “I have business to attend to.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you angry at me?”

“Of course not,” he snapped.

“You didn’t have to pay it all.” A defensive edge crept into her voice. “It would’ve taken a few years, but I would’ve bought my way out.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“Yes. I did out the math.”

“Did you read the contract?” Tag spat, wearing the sneer he usually reserved for everyone else on Jakku.

“Obviously!”

“And what,” he said with stinging venom, “do you think ‘compounding interest based on the original principal’ means?”

“... You always did the budgets.”

He nodded tightly. “So it’s my fault. Splendid, I never would’ve guessed.”

“Tag—“

“Your brilliant escape attempt left me no _choice,_ Rey.”

“Because of the bounty on you?”

“Because of the bounties on _you_.”

“On me?” She scowled in confusion.

“You.” Tag stalked towards her, skin hot and flushed. “I’ve never mattered. I’m the son of a scullery whore in a secondary kitchen attached to a minor summer palace. You, on the other hand.” He pressed forward, leaning in far too close. “You matter to this story.” He placed a finger under her chin, tilting her face up towards his. “You. You’re _radiant_ with power.”

She stared up at him, her breath coming too hard.

“Why is everything about power with you?”

His hand fell. He turned on his heel and rapidly strode away, circling around to his ship’s back door.

She ran after him. “Tag, I don’t understand what happened!”

“Nothing happened,” he barked back, now shoving open the hatch and entering. He held his chin high and his spine ramrod straight, his whole body rigid as if he was marching in a military parade. As if he was more droid than human.

“The worse you’re hurt,” she called, “the better your posture.”

He jerked, as if inhaling at a stab of pain. Then he stepped forward, allowing her space to cross the threshold after him.

The _Amity_ was chaos. Boxes upturned, parts cracked, utensils and rations spilled, knife marks carved deep into the walls. Explosives lay bare, conventional grenades and other charges she’d never seen, scattered openly on the floor.

“Where do you _think_ ,” he breathed, “the money came from?”

“Sabacc?” she tried, thin and hopeless even to her own ears. “Maybe you found an ancient relic in the Empire labs.”

Tag laughed, a bitter jangling sound.

As he turned about slowly to survey the wreckage, the answer struck Rey like a plasma bolt to the ribs. Only one commodity sold that fast for that much on Jakku, only one always had a waiting audience far from Plutt in the cantinas of Cratertown, and Tag— all long limbs and sharp angles, pale skin and gleaming hair— had it in spades.

“Tag—”

“I think—” he cut her off and then pressed a hand to his own lips, pursing them tight, knuckles and face both drained white. “I think I might sell off my cutlery. The extra clothes, too.” After another pause he spoke, the phrases slack and disjointed, his eyes gone hazy. “And I might drop my accent, for something ... better suited to my station.”

Rey balled up her fists, shaking with fury, helpless to stop the tears welling in her eyes. At last she gritted out three words. “Don’t you _dare_.”

She scrubbed off her wet cheek with the sleeve of her tunic. He watched her with dry eyes. Then Rey stepped forward to embrace him. “Tag ...”

He flinched, and she stopped in place. Reaching out with her mind, she found a world of rain.

.

Rey moved.

Not to the _Amity_ , but into an old Imperial shuttle lying close to it. She and Tag scavenged together some days, working largely in quiet. Rey kept extra water and rations on her belt for when he needed them.

“Might I—”

“Always.”

So some days she would let him come home with her, cooking them both dinner, giving up her pallet and sleeping on the other side of the shuttle, draped over two of its seats. Whenever she got up he’d already be awake, gaze always resting on her.

Her next time at Niima she purchased a tablecloth from the lacemakers’ stall— its misty patterns crafted by hand, useless and achingly beautiful. She went that night to the _Amity_ and knocked on the door. After she had waited a respectable amount she began trying codes, a better curated list than before. Her second attempt succeeded, as she unlocked the door with the date when Tag met her. She slipped into the ship— clean and well-organized once more— and left the tablecloth folded on his mattress.

.

A few days later she came home to a bell on her pillow, alongside a freshly potted nightbloomer.

.

Rey sat astride her bike, speeding across desert when the blaze caught her eye, staining the night sky an angry red. She used her macrobinoculars to confirm her first guess— the sacred village which worshipped the Force was currently burning to the ground— and checked her weapons.

Her long-distance comlink beeped a second later.

“Rey,” Tag cautioned, “don’t go near it.”

“Why not?”

“I saw a crossfire with at least twenty blasters, plus a shuttle lifting off— I’d say Lambda-class, but it’s designed better. The Empire’s back. They won’t have left survivors.”

“Are you certain?”

“Perfectly.”

An unseasonable chill grabbed Rey, and she raised the binoculars again. “West of the fire, do you see it?”

“... Now I do.”

They closed in on the BB unit in synchrony. Tag approached it first, pointing a blaster at it. “Rebellion or Empire?”

It skittered back, beeping out a whimper and crashing right into Rey’s legs.

“I think the color scheme gives that one away,” she said, kneeling down. “You’re with the heroes, aren’t you?”

She reached out and unbent its antenna. It replied with a series of happy beeps.

“We are Tag and Rey, and we’re sadly behind the times here on Jakku,” Tag said, crouching down beside Rey, attempting to reset the scene with the gentle tone he used when she was small. “But at a guess you’re on a mission, and it ... hasn’t gone entirely according to plan.”

The droid swiveled to look back at the smoking village and then hung its orange-and-white head.

“If you catch us up,” Rey chimed in, “then we might be able to help you.”

And so the unit began explaining the new war in broad terms, how the sinister First Order had risen from the ashes of the Empire. With many flourishes it cautioned them against Supreme Leader Snoke and his villainous Force-using protege, Kylo Ren, who had visited Jakku that very night and burned down the village and stopped a blaster bolt in midair!

“Is that even possible?” Tag interrupted, looking to Rey.

She drew her own blaster and shot it at the ground with one hand while pulling at the Force with the other. The bolt hovered in midair for a second before crashing down.

“All right then.” He nodded politely to the droid. “Please continue.”

Impressed by her power, it turned more loquacious, speedily explicating the First Order’s strategy. It warned of an evil planet-destroying base, developed from old Death Star engineering plans and scaled up by the head of the First Order’s military, the terrifying General Brendol Hux ...

It pattered on, and Rey drank its story in, too fascinated to notice how Tag’s stare drifted again to the burning wreck.

At last the droid concluded its saga with a plea to be taken to the Ileenium system, Rey nodding in recognition of the name. Tag turned back to them with a smirk, before she caught the fire in his eyes.

He rose to his feet and craned his neck up, gaze turned at last towards the stars. “Shall we go on an adventure?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this please let me know! I hope to meet some fellow Reyux shippers 😊
> 
> For Kylo's perspective on Brendol Hux's First Order, please see the next story.


End file.
